On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 13:37:58 -1000, Nieft / Secola <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Amadeus:
>>Taking human milk as a model is perfectly valid only for the
>> early ages.
>>It's one possible example to infer from the milk composition to
>>the adult's needs. (Other possibilities might be to infer something
>>from the prehistoric available food items :-))
>
>Wherever you got your figures on breastmilk they are incomplete because
>leaving out EPA and DHA in the fats is not the same as saying they aren't
>there. Further, the composition of breast milk varies from woman to woman,
>breast to breast, foremilk to hind milk, month to month, day to day, hour
>to hour
.
My only source to food analysis that resolves down to
each single lipid is the USDA database at
 http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/cgi-bin/nut_search.pl
If you enter "human milk" , you see, that EPA DHA is not
"left out", but that it is zero.
Otherwise I would have mentioned that that data was not available.
I would assume that percentages may
vary in milk from woman to woman/day to day etc,
but not, that a stuff that is *essential* to a baby would ever go
to zero, if you take a healthy mother.

Human baby's are not dependent on DHA/EPA in the food.
An so, at a certain probability adult humans aren't dependant too.

>You can "infer" all you want, but again, you've already decided what you
>are going to decide upon before you find your data and before you "infer".
>
>Wasting time,
>Kirt
Which decision would you "accuse" me to have already tak
en before
making a conclusion based on that data? ??

My conclusion is, that nuts are a historically correct
and a presently available and recommendable source of fat (especially walnuts).
If you don't like nuts or don't accept the 7:1 ratio
*and* you want to stay historic paleolithical
then you can eat brains as an alternative.
If you accept non-historic, modern alternatives
you can eat flax-oil or sardines.

What would be your contrary conclusion?

Amadeus